Why does Windows XP refuse to die? - Page 4

[mlesniak]

Well I'm still using Windows XP on my home desktop and most of the pcs where I work are still on Windows XP. I must admit that I prefer XP to Windows 7, and I don't like the look of Windows 8 even though I have only read about it. I think that Jennifer's approach is reasonable. You've always got to take precautions but let's not be paranoid.

[Reverend Jim]

I'm still using Windows XP on my old ThinkPad because there are no drivers for anything newer for my LexMark printer and my video capture/tuner device.

[Wil 0' Wisp]

A few hints as to what the Lexmark might be and or the tuner may help , let it run, but if you are going to go to 64 Bit don't make it XP 64 another vapourware O/s for Drivers (Vapourware = yes we are working on them they will be out sometime soon {read never}) Sorry Jennifer. I am still using XP on this PC but the next rebuild will be 7 or 8 it depends on what is available. I support the Don't upgrade unless your Life will be better and you know things will work. The lexmark will probably work if setup as something else on the end of a network cable. NB seen any laptops with parallel interfaces or PCMCIA slots? I have a client wil a SCO-Unix box from 15 years ago, still working but hardly used. XP ain't dead it just going to take a while to fade away.

[JenniferArden]

Hi Wil O' Wisp no need to apologize, I know XP can't fulfull everyone's needs, but for me its perfect and does everything I need. I know in the near future I will also have to let go of XP, for now just hanging on to XP while it is still possible. I do have 7 Ultimate x64 and will switch over when its really not possible to use XP anymore

[caperjack]

I do have 7 Ultimate x64 and will switch over when its really not possible to use XP anymore

make the switch now ,so you can enjoy another great OS

[JenniferArden]

I have tried 7 a few times but I don't like it, I have a dual boot scenario on my laptop with XP Pro x64 and 7 Ultimate x64. 7 is ugly - even more than the standard XP visual style. Networking in XP is much easier to setup as well. Can't get my Nokia E72 connected in 7 and my HP DeskJet 930C won't work in 7

[HelpingHands-IT]

This may sound a little strange but I still have users with DOS 6.22 running specific applications they swear by, the old addage "if it aint broke - dont fix it" is really appropriate.

Many XP users are comfortable with the product (comfort zone - first O/S) and reluctant as some of us were to move each stage from DOS up to Windows and follow its lead to its current manifestation, we all make our choices based on need and cost, those who can move and are excited by the transition will jump to Windows 8 ironically The last machine i had come into my workshop was a brand new Samsung Windows 8 machine all singing and dancing, which the client wanted removing and had Ubuntu installed, this client, up until 18 months ago didnt know there were other products on the market.

Around 60% of my client base are still on XP and are happy with it and were quite happy to buy NEW business class machines for their homes to enable them to continue having access to the software (business downgrade option), however the latest death-nail in the coffin for XP means that more machines will eventually "refresh" their systems straight into Windows 8 if they buy from the high street and those with techie inclined contacts will aim to use Windows 7 due to its similarity to XP. There are programs out there which will allow you to continue using XP for many years to come if your prudent enough to have all the required downloads and a suitable off-line delivery system to install the updates.

There is also the virtualisation option which is even built in to the latest incarnation from Microsoft, so to that end I look forward to seeing XP for approximately another 10 years in one form or another. The fact the geeks of the 70's and 80's have turned a hobby into something everyone now wants to play with is testament to the "vision" of some... and now we all get paid to do what we were doing as kids....

[caperjack]

I guess its all what you use a computer for ,I don't have a phone to connect to it ,I don't have a printer ,it picks up other computer and networks to them even before win7-8 is even fully installed ,a little harder hooking to my wifes Vista laptop ,as for programs to work with it ,I have a msdn acct and get the latest Microsoft programs that I need or want to try ,my computer is just a toy ,or a tool to search internet for info on fixing computers and other media devices .
win7 and 8 still have compatibility mode like XP had for win95/98 programs ,not sure how well it works because i haven't tried it yet

[Wil 0' Wisp]

Ah yes HelpingHands-it (a dutch man?) (sorry!) Another techy, another It consultant whos has seen it, done it and knows where XP will go. Hi see a few of my posts back awhile, same comments, same view point, same kind of take on where too. I have a mobile phone that is what it is for, to talking to people when I am mobile. I have a Networked system at home, printers, NAS, Digital camera (you wanna see the pics?) Iam, no apologies, not a white socky, not a techno freak not a ITHEAD, and belive it some one who doesn't want ot be always connected, always ON, But as an ItDino; the technology will move on. The trick is ways to 1) Make it work for you. 2) make it work for others 3) Get a idea about how to hang on to the best bits. The first PC I owned was an OSICOM 386SX33, 8MB, 175MB HDD, CDRom (read only) FDD. Win311, Printer? HP 500 you had to swop the cartridge to get it to print Colour (NB UK!) or B/w would I want that now? No chance. Win7 networks fine esp with TCP/IP V6 switched off. Some things I don't like you can't set a Gateway without switching the DHCP off, DNS goes the same way. XP is an OLD friend now, but a B***** first time out. Device drivers still a pain, if you haven't got exactly the right one. HP, Epson etc haven't reivented things so you can get around it. I really can't see a reason for Win XP64 sub standard or Enhanced. Not now. Use the virtual Machine mount you games tools and old printers in that. Learn how too, find some one to show you the hardware will not last, the software just might...

[Palebushman]

Bottom line from the original post:- "So, why does Windows XP refuse to die? Perhaps the real question should be why do Windows XP lovers refuse to do the decent thing and have it put to sleep? That would be the kindest thing after all".

My personal view on that question is; we are not talking about pets or loved ones here.
What we are talking about is a piece of human creativity that started out very simple and developed in to a popular worlwide tool. Some very old vintage cars have the same, if not more, 'grunt' than today's 'modern' cars and I don't see their owners rushing to the wreckers yard with them. On the contrary, they enjoy and love spending their hard earned money them, a very lucrative point that seems to elude the bean counters at MS.

[JenniferArden]

My first PC was a custom system by one of the many IT companies around in the early 90's. It consisted of: ABIT PH5 M/B (cache RAM still on a separate pc board that plugged into the M/B - 256KB), 8MB RAM, Pentium 100MHz CPU, WD Caviar 850MB IDE H/D, Trident 1MB PCI VGA adapter, Creative Sound Blaster 32 ISA sound card (had RAM slots on the card), Creative 8x CD-ROM IDE drive, 2 x stiffy drive, 14" SVGA monitor (can't remember the brand), keyboard (with big round plug) and serial mouse (everything cream colour lol) The PC had DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on and I still have the installation files

[Wil 0' Wisp]

Go love it. It won't die, It will be harder to use it as the hardware fails. Ask a Hardware engineer...or any one old enough to know this is a truth. It will live but only if you learn to virtualise it, and before all the driver software you know and love goes too. The computer industry is egg/chicken/egg/ Development lead times mean that finally you get a piece of Hardware that with fly with what ever you load on it, and some moneygrabbing Software Co wrecks it with quote ' a pile of bloatware' Try looking for the original Amstrad, Atairi, AppleMAC, hardware it is still just about there, but in no volume. Is any one out there still bashing away with Windows v2? I bet you will find someone. What happen to Lotus 123, and Word Perfect DBASE III all the masters of the DOS enviroment. You can see the legacy of these products even now. They have been Windgered, well 123 and Word Perfect. XP won't die if you want to use it, you will have to have ready supply of old hardware to make it function, or use a virtual machine to run it in. I haven't got a problem with that concept, just you will have to realise what you need to do to get your/the world the way you want it.

[gerbil]

I have the feeling that come end of support there will be half a billion XP systems out there, likele feeding pests into the net. Should be interesting.

[minuteman263]

In our office, we have 4 Windows 7 pro's and 2 Windows XP Pro's. XP is a good, stable operating system that everything we have has still has drivers for. I was a big fan of Windows 2000 as well. I still see many business's and local government offices with XP on their computers, so it's not going away anytime soon. I use one of the XP machines at work only because I have a laptop on a dock. I set up the Windows 7 machines when we upgraded here and I like 7 as well. I just think that people have still working peripherals and don't want to be faced with having to possibly upgrade them by going with windows 7.

[Wil 0' Wisp]

Thats basically it, and I agree There only a couple of total really ghastly O/s one was Millenium and one was Vista. I try to access the latest operating system as they come out. So I can advise people not to leap in to fire, scattering the working hardware as they go. XP was only good after SP2. I like the way the Pictures can be handled in XP Its the same with Win 7 good easy and quick cos this is Quad core etc. I am coming to terms with Win7 as I normal, I am finding the places where the things I use are hidden. I have a XP PC and a Win 7 laptop, Typing this from the laptop on the PC using a RDC.

[anewhope]

I am still a windows XP user and will continue to be one until it is no longer feasible for me to keep it there. I am still wishing that development companies would continue to produce for Windows XP because I believe that is number 1 reason that so many people are upgrading the OS. There is no software for XP. I personally love windows XP and would love to see it go on. And I would love to see software being built that is compatible with Windows XP; this would, in my mind, keep people using what is the superier operating system.

[caperjack]

There is no software for XP

sure there is ,it was just made a few year back, it still outhere to get ,all the software one would need to use a computer what it was meant ofr ,has been made for xp ,some antivirus programs may not be compatable anymore ,but the rest will still work ,what software would you like them to be still making for xp

[Wil 0' Wisp]

The advantage of a reducing population of XP users is the dear bright people who write viruses malware, and all other forms of nasty things will no longer target XP as an O/s. That one grand smile point or two.

A per previous posts if you can get to grips with a virtual machine running on the latest stuff you can have your fav o/s ad infinitum. Better yet you can have an image of the system in any state which can allow you to 'restore' to a point in time when all was fine and normal, so it doesn't have to die. A 'get another one out of the box' trick if and only if.

[Wil 0' Wisp]

(Sorry guys tired) IF and only if you can set up the virtual machine. You don't have to use the MS offering! Once you have the O/s setup and activated that is it. Install your apps, configure the printers and the network and go for it. Once it's all working save the image and when something nasty happens reload the good working image.

[sbesch]

There is also another very good reason why there will be WinXP installations for a very long time. It is not uncommon to have some very expensive piece of hardware using some version of Windows that cannot (ever) be updated to a newer version because there is no possible way to obtain newer drivers, or in fact, even an updated software system. Sometimes the manufacturer isn't even around anymore. Incidentally, the same thing is true for Windows 2000. In our Lab, we have at least 2 such instruments. Two of them are a pair > $20,000.00 atomic force microscopes that MUST use either W2K or WXP. I also have spectrophotometers and HPLC systems, that, while they may be upgradeable, it isn't just a simple - "Oh, let's Update the OS". Additional software upgrades would be required as well, and these may cost upwards of $10,000.00, if they are available at all. All other considerations aside, I could simply not justify dumping over $100,000.00 worth of hardware just to add a few bells and whistles to the OS. Nope, I stay with what already works. The "new" hardware that most of you are talking about is literally chump change by comparison.

[Wil 0' Wisp]

Hi I suggest you look at the virtualization solution as an alternative as quickly as possible, or image waht you have as soon as possible

[JenniferArden]

This is exactly why support for Windows XP cannot just be ended - there is a bigger picture involved here than a 11 year old operating system, there are critical systems and equipment not to mention very expensive that can only function with Windows XP and while some hardware may be able to function with Windows 7, its simply not worth the additional cost for new software just to upgrade the OS. This is a very valid reason to maintain support for Windows XP i.m.o. We use Windows XP only in our office on a daily basis and it performs admirably, wheather its the wireless network, printing, email or spreadsheets and word processing.

[sbesch]

Hi I suggest you look at the virtualization solution as an alternative as quickly as possible, or image waht you have as soon as possible

Don't think that I haven't already spent many, many hours on virtualization solutions. Aside from the XP issue, there are just too many advantages to a virtual machine, among these are replication, ease of backup, and not the least of all, I can run the Windows install in a very secure jail by not giving Windows direct hardware access to anything but the specific hardware in question. I've had just too much aggravation from graduate students, post-docs and ham handed IT people buggering the system to not recognize these advantages. Believe it or not, I am actually considering bolting the computer case to the equipment rack and putting a case hardened padlock on it to mitigate the chronic problems I've had with the equipment being compromised.

Back to the virtualization issue. There are several problems: 1) High end hardware (like the AFM's I mentioned) usually have a customized bus card driving the hardware. To use these cards under virtualization, PCI passthrough is a requirement. The problem is that none of the virtualization solutions has yet to fully master the technology. 2) While VirtualBox does support PCI passthrough, it only does so for cards that do not use a shared interrupt. 3) While almost all modern Motherboards support the hardware extensions needed for PCI passthrough, it is almost impossible to find one with a PCI slot that does not have a shared interrupt. This problem is made still worse by the fact that the MoBo manufacturers do not publish this information anymore - in fact when asked for this information, the typical response was "This is proprietary Information. You will have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement." How stupid is that? It wasn't very long ago that this was standard information provided in the user manual. Furthermore, once I have the board, a simple "lspci" gives me their proprietary interrupt layout anyway! Sometimes I think that these people must be brain dead. Not wanting to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours buying and testing motherboards, for the time being, I just wait. Sooner or later the PCI passthrough thing on shared interrupts will be solved and I can move to a virtual solution. Nevertheless, I still need my trusty copy of XP, Virtualization or not.

[Wil 0' Wisp]

Well said that man! It really is no good trying support XP. It not the operating system that is going to die, its the hardware. So the question is how are you going to do it when your trusty, rusty P4 etc Power supply fails (Most likley) followed by the PATA hard drive or SATA 1/11 drive (next most likely) I will point out yet again I come from afar distant land of before 80MB hard drives and 1Mb memory land and before, so please don't think I don't know about Hardware failures. My First IT boss used to deal with the kit used to write the code and drivers, and BIOS programmes for the first 8080 PC. Huh what? The PCI pass through problem will be solved, no doubt. You people really are going to have to heed the virtuallization message or that wil be it. There is no development on the operating system, and I suspect no further apps of any scale or device drivers are being created so it will be as is, as it was, and will be for ever more.

[rajutech]

Oh! people afraid of some software conflicts of New OS. So they may be out of updating it.

Myself Got Windows 8 PRO... And it is cool OS.

[sbesch]

PRO

Oh! people afraid of some software conflicts of New OS. So they may be out of updating it.

Myself Got Windows 8 PRO... And it is cool OS.

You're missing the point. Fear has nothing to do with this at all. It is 1) Necessity, 2) Desirability, and, 3) Preference. It also has nothing to do with mere software conflicts but out and out software incompatability at the lowest possible level. Drivers from the older Windows Driver models simply will not work at all anymore - finished, full stop. If you can't get new drivers then you can't use the new OS, and that's all there is to it. Argue about it all you like. It will change nothing. This is not philosopyy, religion or politics. It's just the facts.

[sbesch]

Myself Got Windows 8 PRO... And it is cool OS.

This just made me think of something else which I believe is the most common misconception in the universe. It is not the "OS" that we are talking about at all. It is the Graphical User Interface. Take the time to research this a bit and you will discover that under the hood, the OS (that is the kernel and its associated interfaces) is not all that different from the original Windows NT kernel. Things have changed to be sure, but not as much as you might think. The real and profound changes have been, and continue to be, in the User Interface, NOT the OS. So much so that it was claimed by some that you could take the NT4 kernel and dump it into Window's XP and it would still run. This is admittedly an apocryphal and unsubstantiated claim, but it does illustrate the point. We should be referring to the Windows 8 GUI, and that may indeed be "Cool"!

[Steven clarinet]

The main reasons why xp persists are economic. Here we are at least 3 years down the road from promises that drivers would be coded for thousands of $$ worth of office copy equipment and virtually nothing has been done to foster trust to purchase any more equipment from companies s/a Kyocera copystar . One has to keep an xp machine up for the reason of using a 7 year old $2000. printer in perfect running condition.

[sbesch]

The main reasons why xp persists are economic.

Steven - This is an excellent point and clearly should have been included in my list of reasons. Thanks for picking up the slack!

[MidiMagic]

7 is also harder to use.